Lowering Level Of Safety
 

Airline Panel Would Relax Flying Rule for Co-Pilots http://news360.com/article/367509650

From the people who brought us age 65 and FAR 117.

Those flight hour minima were brought to us by the Colgan families and ALPA's legislative efforts led by Lee Moak.

This proposal would effectively accomplish almost nothing in the short run but I suspect that is not the real goal here.

The amount of military Pilots no longer under an active duty obligation with less than 750 hours is ridiculously small and would not even put a dent in this issue.

The real reason, in my opinion for such a modification is in setting precedence for a relaxation of the minimums. If this goes through it will shortly be followed by other relaxations.

Scoop

Bingo Scoop

Stand by for age 67 or fly as long as you can pass your medical.

Absolutely ridiculous. It's a pay shortage not a pilot shortage. Instead of paying more they just want to pad their own pockets and lower the level of experience. What a racket!!! They say higher salaries and signing bonuses have not helped the problem. Pay and signing bonuses have only brought pay up to about $35-40k first year and then they take a paycut second year because there is no bonus. That's not exactly compensation for someone with six figures invested in training and 1500hrs. They need to be paying close to $100k first year but choose not to. They can afford it but it would require insourcing all the flying. You telling me billions in profits can't pay for this? Give me a break!!!

Concur... I only did one flying tour and still left with over 1400hrs. Can't imagine the number of guys leaving with between 500-750 is more than a hand full....

Also, the burden wouldn't be insurmountable if the initial jobs pilots obtained after school paid enough to keep them off of food stamps...

People are still repeating this tired old line of propaganda from the unions? HA HA HA ...

Pay has increased in some cases quadruple. Demand has increased, and supply has diminished. There is absolutely a shortage of new pilots to feed into the sector.

You do understand there is downward price pressure on the market too, right? If regionals increase pay that means they have to charge more to the passengers. There may not be the elasticity there to allow for that.

It's not just military. They want to lower it to 500hrs for those with an aviation degree. This is a ploy by the aviation universities to get people to pay for a useless aviation degree that makes them no better than someone with a useful college degree. Now kids come out with more debt to a job that pays artificially low wages because the FAA, congress, the regional airline association, and the aviation universities aren't interested in safety they are interested in money.